A Biography of Loneliness

Fay Bound Alberti is a Reader in History and UKRI Future Leaders Fellow at the University of York. She is a TED speaker and has published widely on medicine, the body, gender and emotion in books and scholarly articles as well as in the media. She has taught at universities around the UK including UCL, Lancaster, Manchester, and York.

• Acknowledgements Preface: No (Wo)man is an island Introduction: Loneliness as a 'modern epidemic' 1: When 'oneliness' became loneliness: the birth of a modern emotion 2: A 'disease of the blood'? The chronic loneliness of Sylvia Plath 3: Loneliness and lack: romantic love, from Wuthering Heights to Twilight 4: Widowhood and loss: from Thomas Turner to the Widow of Windsor 5: Instaglum? Social media and the making of online community 6: A 'ticking timebomb'? Rethinking loneliness in old age 7: Roofless and rootless: no place to call 'home' 8: Feeding the hunger. Materiality and the neglected lonely body 9: Lonely clouds and empty vessels. When loneliness is a gift Conclusion: reframing loneliness in a neoliberal age Further reading Appendix

A compassionate, wide-ranging study.